“That’s what I thought, but it’s an abbreviation. Maybe University of Xenia, Ohio?” Brooke said.
“Right, it is U-N-I–X, not V.”
“Roulette dot unix,” Kronos said.
“How do you figure that?” Joey asked as he moved the photo closer and farther to try and make out the chicken scratch.
“Because it’s right here on the friggin’ drive. It’s a unix operating program. I’m opening it now.”
“So our boy Raffey had dreams of the big wheel at Monte Carlo?” Joey said.
“My cousin, Mathilde, lives a few miles away from there. I can swing on down in one of your SAM flights, check the casino cameras,and be back by dinner!”
“Let’s see what brain boy comes up with first, shall we?” Bill said.
“It’s a super-collider simulation program. It is just one module, but it has open loops to another program. This is interesting — ”
“What’s happening now is our techno-sapien, as I like to call him, has latched onto a digital clue. At times like this, our whole plan can change…wait for it…wait for it,” Bill said.
“Leather Pants was planning to do something; he was running a lot of permutations of different acceleration possibilities and some sort of malfunction.”
“And there it is,” Bill said.
“Okay, help me here, Kronos. Was he trying to figure out how to make the thing go boom or trying to stop it from going all blooey?” Brooke asked as she stood behind him looking at the lines of code, which meant nothing to her, but was clear as day to the human robot.
“That I can’t tell without the master program at the Hadron that he was tied into,” Kronos said.
“And there it’s not,” Bill said, surprised for the first time that Kronos didn’t know everything.
“But he was playing with destroying the rings, right?” Brooke said.
“He ran a program in which various paths to destroying it were simulated. But again, you’d do the exact same thing whether you’re trying to destroy them or stop their destruction,” Kronos said.
“So you can’t tell intent? Is that what you are telling me, Kronos?” Bill said.
“That’s pretty much the story, Hick.”
“Keep digging, see what else you could find,” Bill said, more as an order than a suggestion. Then he turned to Brooke, “University of Xenia? Ohio?”
“Sorry, it was just the first thing that came to my head,” Brooke said. She grabbed a set of the note photos, and flopped down on the couch in the conference room. She was up again like a jackrabbit in one second. “Wait a minute. Kronos, he has made no connection to the Internet for weeks. So how could he interface with the computers at Hadron?”
“Here it is, it’s a whole compiled routine under another program called Wedgestone. Hey, this is brilliant work. Didn’t you say this guy got an award or some shit?”
“Yes. He received a new car for a program he wrote,” Captain Lustig chimed in as he flipped his notes. “Here it is, stabilization of accumulated data during sensor input lag.”
“Sure, that explains these polynomials and all the variable fractals this bad boy draws on. Saaweet hunk of code here, Billy boy.”
“So, now can you determine what he was doing with this program?” Bill asked.
“I can try, but his ultimate reason for doing this may not be apparent just from this one program.”
“What does that mean…” Bill’s question was interrupted by a loud signal emanating from the clone phone system that the FedPol techs had set up. It had been silent since its establishment a week ago. Everybody froze. The tech held up his hand as he hit record, but nothing happened.
“False alarm?” Kronos asked.
“Pocket call or wrong number maybe,” Brooke said.
Then it rang a second time. This time they heard Raffey pick up.
“Hello?” It was Juth, tentative and cautious as he spoke.
“The authorities were in your house today.” The voice on the other end said flatly.
Bill shot a glance to Brooke, who closed her eyes; her ruse didn’t work.
“What? No. There was no one in this house. When?”
“Today, during the gas leak.”
“What gas leak? I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Do we need to send you Kirsi’s left foot?”
“No, no. Don’t do that. I’m sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t know. But my door was locked and nothing here has been touched. Are you sure they were in this house?”
“It does not matter. If you even think of going to them, your sister will regret ever bringing her daughter into this world. Do you understand?”
“Yes, of course, I’ve done everything you’ve said, please just don’t hurt them. Please.”
“You will perform your task tomorrow during the first test. Do you understand?”
“Yes. During the first experiment. Then you’ll let them go?”
“If you perform well, yes.”
“May I speak to them? Please, I beg you, let me just know…” The connection was ended but Raffey continued, “No…No! Just let me know they are okay, damn you!” Then he sobbed and eventually hung up.
“Did we get a location?” Joey ran to the tech. He held up his hand as he was in communication with the signal tracers on another floor. “We got the cell tower. North of the city. That’s as close as we got.”
“I want a map now! And start scrubbing the audio, I want voice print, background amplification and any other electronic test that can lead us to a twenty on these people, er — location.” Joey used the common American radio code ‘twenty’ from the ten-twenty signal used almost universally by cops and later Civilian Band radio code used by truckers as a request for or statement of one’s location.
“Boss, I want in on this. I want to get those people back safe,” Brooke said.
Bill looked to Joey. “Joey’s call.”
“Brooke, get ’em back alive, girl.”
Brooke ran from the room, headed down to the ready room to suit up for battle.
“Kronos, anything else?”
“I think he’s planning to do something with the power frequency.”
“Why do you say that?”
“All the simulations I have found seem to deal with overheated magnets in the rings. As far as I know, the only way to get them to heat up would be to throw them out of their efficiency peak.”
“Couldn’t that also happen with a surge?” Bill said.
“Harder to do because the circuit breaker would trip. But amperage-or wattage-based breakers would be impervious to frequency shift. In fact, the result of the counter-EMF inductive forces within the magnet would actually decrease the draw.”
“Because the hysteresis curve starts trading frequency for I squared R losses very rapidly,” Bill reasoned as he looked over Kronos’ shoulder at the screen.
“Whoa! Hey, English only here…” Joey protested with his hands up.
“Or at least German,” Captain Lustig said.
“Let’s just say he can melt the rings in a few milliseconds.”
“So that sounds like he breaks the thing. How is that a black hole event?” Joey said.
“It depends when he does it. If he does it before the collision, it’s just a broken machine. If he does it at the point of collision, then no safe-guards.”
“One more time for the slow of thinking, please?”
“Magnetic bubble or jar. The whole Landau experiment depends on the suspension of the collided matter floating or suspended in a magnetic field, not touching any other matter.”
“That’s why inside the rings it’s a vacuum that equals deep space. The acceleration is done with the magnetism created by 9,300 super-cooled and superconducting magnets, and so is the containment of the mini big bang.”
“So if you disable the magnetic containment and the explosion starts to interact with the matter that makes up the rings and the supports and eventually the support concrete…”